Read Force Majeure for Free Online Page B

about damage to a bicycle, and we must have words about that – even the Captain is here only on sufferance.’
    You can take this. Think of it as a test. Think of it as a necessary sacrifice, spent in sweat.
    ‘Three months,’ Kay said.
    ‘I'm sorry?’
    ‘I’ll stay here three months, or until Prospero raises his head or some other alternative presents itself. If not, I’ll leave Candida for good.’
    Flower-of-the-Lady stared at her with lizard eyes for a good minute before nodding brusquely. Kay, hanging heavily with depression and defeat, made a reasonable face and nodded back. The-Lady swooped down laughing and kissed her dryly on the mouth.
    Deal done. She could cope. What’s Appeared can’t be Disappeared.
    The chatelaine pressed her mouth to Kay’s ear and whispered, in a language that was not English, not Spanish, not Portuguese, not any she’d heard before, but the meaning of which was still perfectly clear. ‘Welcome,’ she said, through the gift of the gab, ‘to the house of dragons.’
    ‘Why don’t you cry?’
    Azure had offered to make tea, and this time Kay had accepted, but she left it to sit on the table and grow cold. Watching the steam rise from the saucer-lip was a bleak comfort. It was the heat escaping from her life. If Azure was annoyed at seeing her effort go to waste, she wasn’t showing it.
    ‘Why don’t you scream? Why don’t you make some noise? You’re obviously pissed off. So bloody well show it.’
    Azure was also naked except for a pair of knee-length orange socks that padded furiously on the floor as she paced back and forth. The palpable sight and scent of her body was just another reason for Kay to keep up her numbed façade, just another assault on her senses.
    Don’t let anything through the defences.
    Azure had a pallid, skinny body, her ribcage visible below her stunted round breasts. There were, to Kay’s surprise, no tattoos, no piercings, no unnatural markings at all. She’d been in bed when Kay had returned from her meeting, but had risen in concern when her guest had sunk into a monkey squat at the table, looking, Azure had said untactfully, ghastly .
    She didn’t want it to show.
    ‘I’m not going to say hard work never did anyone any harm,’ Azure went on, ‘because that’s bollocks. You’re not happy. Throw a bloody tantrum. Spit and kick and scream and punch and let it out. I can take it. It’s not good bottling up your shit. It seeps into your blood. It’s a poison.’
    ‘I’m not bottling up anything. Not,’ she paused, ‘my shit. Not a thing.’
    The shutters were open, letting in warmer air as the sun crept into afternoon.
    Azure sat opposite her and took her hands. ‘You can stay here if you like. You could do with a friend.’
    ‘Thanks.’ She tried to put feeling into that; she hadn’t forgotten.
    ‘I bring home strays from time to time; that won’t be a problem?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘You’re a stray. You’re an Appeared, et moi aussi . We’re all strays, the lot of us. One day the whole world will wake up in Candida.’
    ‘There’ll be some nasty shocks that day.’ That sounded rude, and she couldn’t bring herself to let it go by, not to Azure, who was blameless in all this. ‘I mean, it’s not very big.’
    ‘There’s more to it than you might think.’
    ‘I have a servant back home. Don’t look at me like I’m a slave-owner; I don’t mean Upstairs Downstairs , I mean someone who comes into town twice a week to clean. Twice a week. Shit, I’m here three months.’
    ‘Stop feeling sorry for yourself; it’s not attractive.’ Azure reached out to brush loose hairs from Kay’s face. Her fingertips were wet, bike-oily, leaving a tingling, odourless mark on Kay’s cheek. ‘Scream, don’t whinge. Yes? No? That tea’s gone off.’
    ‘I didn’t feel like it.’
    ‘Can I get you anything else? They’ll come for you when you’re ready, you know.’
    ‘Do you have pen and paper? I need to write